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End the tyranny of the thinnies

Some folk built like this, some folk built like that/But the way I’m built, you shouldn’t call me fat/Because I’m built for comfort, I ain’t built for speed.

Does my story lie in a blues lyric? Why not, I say. The time has come to take a position, stand up for the rights of fatties against the current campaign to wipe us off the face of the planet. End the tyranny of the thinnies.

Because now they’re playing dirty. The newest research says that you have to be thin just to cut the risk of cancer. Being thin won’t prevent you from getting cancer mind you, but it will apparently make it less likely that you do.
Let’s not get into whether thin people get cancer or not. Let’s not even get into whether thin people who never eat, drink or skip their daily exercise die at all. Maybe they just live their boring lives forever and how would us fat people know anyway, since we’re more likely to die from every disease?

There was a time when being thin meant you were unhealthy. The Indian word for plump, incidentally, is healthy. You pinched the fat pink cheeks of a well-rounded baby and said, “Kitna healthy hai” so that the parents could beam with pride. Our filmi stars of choice after all are still buxom, thunder thighs and well fleshed out.

I’m not sure how thin is the right thin. Anorexia is bad, we hear all the time. Those poor little rich girls who starve themselves so they are skeletons on skin with no sexual characteristics at all? Are they perfect? Apparently not because at some time they do need to look like something so they get fake breasts and buttocks and lips, but saline and silicon and collagen are not adipose tissue, so that’s okay. Thin plastic bodies built for… what exactly? To look at, perhaps. Thin is also bad if you live in sub-saharan Africa and those parts of India where you are thin because you have no food to eat. That’s presumably not good thin but bad thin. Both ways, it’s still starvation.

But… life is a terminal disease, say the cynics. It’s going to get us all, fat and thin. The pursuit of happiness is a nice idea — if a bit childish — but it is not made clear anywhere that happiness comes from being thin. The pursuit of an ideal goes berserk when your ideal is shallow. Starving your body to feed your brain might make some sense. But the current fuss over actor Shah Rukh Khan’s toned abdominal muscles shows just how silly we can get.

Good health might be a good goal, but not when you are victimised for having a large gluteus maximus and exaggerated claims are made about how being fat will give you cancer. Those of us who are built for comfort begin to wonder: does the gymming industry sponsor all this ‘being fat will kill you’ research? We are politically correct about not calling fat people fat (‘sizeably challenged’, ‘horizontally generous’?), but we are not too politically correct to pillory them for ruining some ‘western’ dream about being too rich and too thin so perfectly articulated by Wallis Simpson.

So, gather round the tree, all fatties, and let us celebrate with Messrs Howlin’ Wolf and Willie Dixon quoted at the top. Some good blues, some peaty single malt, some well-ripened Stilton, some dense rich chocolate cake and in the inimitable words of Molesworth: yar boo sucks to you. Take your skinny a@*% out of my sight.